MISRA-C Lineage

Slide from DDC16 Workshop showing the lineage of MISRA-C. It should be noted that the input to Ford was a coding standard by Les Hatton of Programming Research and the input to Rover was a coding standard by Olwen Morgn also of Programming Research. The intial MISRA-C was primarily the Rover Coding Standard with parts of the Ford Coding Standard. Since then Programming Research have been on the MISRA-C working group to produce MISRA-C:2004 and MISRA-C:2012. They are still contributing today.

Delivered May 2013 to the MISRA-C Workshop at the Device Developer Conference Series. > Link to

In July 2012 MISRA-C3 had had it's public review and the team worked though the feedback intending to finish by Christmas 2012. In fact MISRA-C:2012 was launched on the 25th February 2013 at Embedded World in Germany with the PDF becoming available on the 18th March and the printed versions on the 24th April 2013 See the MISRA-C:2012 team

In 2008 the team expanded from 8 to 12 people and became international with a view across nuclear, aerospace, automotive and medical systems. However due to the recession and job changes, some new members, particularly from over seas did not stay long.

The team also lost two long standing members in 2008/9, Gavin McCall, Visteon, and Andrew Burnard, Jaguar Landrover. The input of both these people will be sorely missed. Gavin had been one the MISRA project from almost the beginning

MISRA-C History

MISRA-C started in 1994 by two UK automotive companies. ( See video below for interview with Les HAtton, Olwen Morgan and Gavin McCall click here) It was published in 1998 and thanks to efforts by Programming Research, LDRA, Phaedrus Systems and others it escaped into mainstream use in the embedded development space. In 2001 a team was formed to create a second version. Initially predominantly automotive participants it soon became a guide for critical systems rather than automotive ones. Hence the change in title.

The second version MISRA-C:2004was launched in 2004 with Gavin McCall,
Visteon Ltd as Chairman by which time many tool vendors were producing MISRA checkers and software that was "MISRA Compliant" In 2007 a Technical Corrigendum was produced for MISRA-C:2004 along with an Exemplar code suite. NOT a test suite.

MISRA-C 1998

How the fisrt version of MISRA-C came about in 1998. Developed for Austin Rover and Ford by Programming Research from a system used to develop a medical coding standard. Subsequent versions of MISRA-C, i.e. 204 and 2012 were developed by the MISRA-C Working Group of which Gavin McCall became Chairman from 2000 to 2008.